Milner was listed in the “Titans” category of Time magazine's 2016 Time 100.[7]Foreign Policy magazine included Milner to its "Power List" – an inaugural list of 500 most powerful people on the planet released in May, 2013.[8] Milner was included in Bloomberg Markets' 2012 50 Most Influential list. In 2010 Fortune's list of the world's fifty most prominent businessmen placed Milner at 46th place and he was recognized by Russian business magazine Vedomosti as "Businessman of the Year".[9]

Born into a Jewish family[10][11] on 11 November 1961 in Moscow, Yuri Milner was the second child of Russian intellectuals.[12] His father, Bentsion Zakharovitch Milner (Бенцион Захарович Мильнер), was active in the sphere of management and organization. He was Chief Deputy Director at the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences.[13] Betty Iosifovna Milner, Yuri's mother, worked at the capital's state-run virological laboratory for disease control. His older sister, eight years his senior, is an architect.

Milner started his business career selling grey market DOS computers in the Soviet Union, which displeased his father. When the national government collapsed, he stopped selling computers to enroll at the Wharton School to earn an MBA.[16]

After graduating, Milner spent the first half of the 1990s at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., as a Russian banking specialist focused on the development of private sector banking. He has described his time at the World Bank as his "lost years", due to watching from afar the privatization of government holdings during the presidency of Boris Yeltsin.[12] In the spring of 1995, Milner was appointed CEO of Alliance-Menatep, an investment brokerage company belonging to then oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky. In December 1996 Milner worked as Vice President and Head of Investment Management of Menatep Bank. From February 1997 to December 2009, Milner was the deputy chairman and the head of the investment division of Menatep Bank. At the time, the market makers described him as "a well-known professional, who will bring the bank valuable experience in international financial institutions and transactions in the Russian investment market".

From 1997 to 2000, Milner was Director General of the investment fund New Trinity Investments. During this period, after reading a review by Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker on the prospects for online businesses, Milner decided to create an internet company. He sought funding from his friend from Menatep days Gregory Finger, who at the time led the Russian branch of the US investment fund New Century Holding. The fund agreed to invest $4.5 million with the proviso that Milner and Finger each personally invest $750,000.

In 1999 Milner, Finger, and NCH created a new company, NetBridge. In 2000, Milner became the president of Netbridzh Services Ltd (netBridge) – the company that "created as an Internet incubator and investment fund". Netbridge succeeded in transferring a variety of U.S.-pioneered internet business models to Russia, creating companies including the portal List.ru, online auction site Molotok.ru (based on eBay), free web-hosting Boom.ru (based on GeoCities), and online shop 24×7, using the formula of Amazon.com.

In February 2001, netBridge and Port.ru (which owned Mail.ru) announced a merger. Milner became CEO of the new company named Mail.ru (though the legal name Port.ru was also retained).

From January 2003 to December 2004, Milner was the CEO of "Neftyanoi", owned by Igor Linshits.

In 2005, NCH shifted its focus from Russian Internet projects and Milner founded the investment fund Digital Sky Technologies (DST), becoming its chairman in 2006. A meeting through mutual friends resulted in Alisher Usmanov becoming a shareholder of Mail.ru Group in 2008.

In March 2012, Milner stepped down from the role of chairman of Mail.ru and from the board of directors.[18] Dmitry Grishin was elected to the board and appointed as chairman while retaining his CEO position. There were no other changes to management or to the board.

Post Mail.ru Group’s IPO, DST is the sole vehicle for further international investments. The company is now fully independent of Mail.ru Group.[19]

From May 2009 to January 2012 Milner was a member of the Commission on Modernization established by Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian President from 2008 to 2012.[20]

In January 2009, while in Palo Alto, Milner became acquainted with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The meeting led to an agreement on 26 May 2009 under which DST bought a 1.96% stake in Facebook for $200 million.[21]

On 16 September 2010, Digital Sky Technologies (DST) changed its name to "Mail.ru Group". The group's portfolio included Mail.ru, Odnoklassniki.ru, ICQ, a minority stake in the social network VKontakte (Russian Facebook equivalent), online payments service OSMP.ru, e‑Port, as well as some other Russian assets. Milner's commercial interests in Facebook, Zynga, and Groupon were transferred to DST Global. Milner became the CEO of DST Global and the chairman of the board of directors of Mail.ru Group. In November 2010, Mail.ru Group held its offering on the London Stock Exchange.[22]

On 29 January 2011, Milner announced that he would invest $150,000 into each of the start‑up program participants selected by the incubator Y Combinator.[23]

In July 2012, Milner established The Breakthrough Prize – a set of international awards recognize three fields of endeavor: Fundamental Physics, Life Sciences and Mathematics. Laureates receive $3 million each in prize money, making the Breakthrough Prizes the largest scientific awards in the world.[30]

The Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences honors advances in understanding living systems and extending human life. Each year, one of the six prizes recognizes work leading to progress against Parkinson's disease and neurodegenerative disorders. The Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics is given annually for accomplishments in fundamental physics broadly defined, including advances in closely related fields with deep connections to physics and can be shared by any number of winners. The Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics is given annually to an individual making significant accomplishments in mathematics. The New Horizons in Physics prizes reward younger researchers who have already produced significant work.

Committees of previous laureates choose the winners from candidates nominated in a process that is online and open to the public.[31] These prizes are funded by Sergey Brin and Anne Wojcicki, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, Yuri Milner and Julia Milner, and Jack Ma and Cathy Zhang. As of January 2015[update], $168.1m in prize-money has been awarded to 70 individual scientists and 4 large research teams.[32]

The annual celebrations also include full-day symposiums in the three recognized fields. Each year’s symposium is held under the auspices of UC Berkeley, UCSF and Stanford University (with the physical venue alternating between them each year). The program of events includes lectures by Breakthrough laureates and other renowned scientists, as well as moderated discussion panels aimed at the general public. The program is broadcast live on the web.[36]

Three initiatives have been announced so far. The first, Breakthrough Listen, will invest $100 million over 10 years in the most comprehensive and sensitive search ever undertaken for evidence of civilizations beyond Earth.[38] The Green Bank, Parkes and Lick observatories[39] will search for radio and laser signals from the nearest million stars, the nearest 100 galaxies, and the plane and center of the Milky Way.[40] All data produced (approximately 10GB per second) will be open to the public, and all software developed for the project will be open source. The initiative will also use the SETI@home distributed computing project, which Milner described as "Collectively … one of the world’s biggest supercomputers".[41]

The second initiative, Breakthrough Message is a $1 million annual prize for digital messages representing Earth and humanity, that could be decoded by another civilization. The messages will not, however, be sent into space until a global discussion on the ethics of such a move has taken place[39]

Announced April 12, 2016, the third project, Breakthrough Starshot, is a US$100 million program to develop a proof-of-concept light sail spacecraft fleet capable of making the journey to Alpha Centauri at 20% the speed of light (60 million m/s or 215 million km/h) taking about 20 years to get there, and about 4 years to notify Earth of a successful arrival.[42][43][44]Pete Worden is the head of this project.

In the past few years I simply do not have time for hobbies. I am even starting to forget what I was fond of. Such as in the past it was reading of literature not related to work.[47]

Milner is married to former high fashionmodel and contemporary artist Julia Milner. She is interested in photography: during the 52nd Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art she produced a contribution entitled Click I Hope.[48] The Milners live and work predominantly in Moscow with their two children. Milner attends synagogue, but says that he is only minimally religiously observant.[10]

In 2011 Milner bought a $100 million home in Los Altos Hills.[49] The compound spans three plots totaling seven hectares and includes a roughly 25,500-square-foot (2,370 m2) main house and a 5,500-square-foot (510 m2) guest house. The current tax bill is about $304,000 a year. The Wall Street Journal reported the price as $100 million, saying it was the most ever paid for a single-family home in the United States. The property is appraised by the Santa Clara County assessor at $50 million.[50]